You'll never get a busy signal when you call Detroit's Original Chicken Shack.
Of course, it won't be the employees taking your order. They're too busy taking care of other customers and cooking up all that chicken.
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No, that friendly voice at the other end of the line is not human--it's artificial intelligence.
Specifically, this is the work of SoundHound AI (SOUN) , a voice AI and speech recognition company, and the folks at the Chicken Shack say they couldn't be happier.
Executives, employees and even a customer appeared in a video posted on the Santa Clara, Calif. company's website to sound off about how the Smart Ordering system made their lives so much easier.
Everybody's talking about voice-recognition technology, which is no surprise, given how the market for this particular type of tech is projected to reach $50 billion by the end of the decade.
SoundHound CEO says 'we have become stronger'
SoundHound is in good position to get a piece of this market. Nvidia (NVDA) , the reigning AI heavyweight champ, invested in the company, causing SoundHound's stock to hit a high note earlier this year.
The company was founded in 2005 by Keyvan Mohajer, an Iranian-Canadian computer scientist who is also the company's CEO.
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Ten years later, SoundHound became the first music recognition service shipping in cars, in a partnership with Hyundai, in the Genesis model.
In 2018, SoundHound announced partnerships with Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz (DDAIF) , and Honda (HMC) to provide voice interaction for their products using its Houndify voice AI platform.
SoundHound went public in 2022 via a SPAC merger, and it ran into some rough patches, where it laid off 10% of its staff that year and roughly 50% of its people in January 2023.
A short time later SoundHound raised $25 million in equity investment.
The company posted first-quarter results on Thursday, reporting an adjusted loss of 7 cents a share on sales of $11.6 million.
Analysts polled by FactSet had expected a loss of 9 cents a share on $10.1 million in revenue. A year ago, SoundHound reported an adjusted 8 cents a share on sales of $6.7 million
"Just a few days ago, we reached the milestone of being a public company for two years," Mohajer said during the company's analysts call. "While the tough external conditions of the last two to three years have weakened or eliminated many organizations, we have become stronger."
The company has nearly tripled its first-quarter revenue in just two years while better-leveraging expenses and more than doubling its cash position to a record high of roughly $225 million on the balance sheet.
SoundHound analyst sees 'major step in the right direction'
Mohajer noted that with Smart Ordering, “we handle millions of calls per month, and we power national brands such as Chipotle, Casey’s, Firehouse, Noodles, and Five Guys.”
"We own our tech," he said. "We have big data from real interactions and nearly 20 years of experience. This is why we are winning."
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Last year, the company unveiled SoundHound Chat AI, which combines the power of large language models with its AI assistant, and signed up such automotive brands as Opel, Peugeot, Vauxhall, Alfa Romeo, and Lancia.
"We also went live into production with Stellantis vehicles in Japan," Mohajer said, adding that with Stellantis, SoundHound became the first company to launch a voice assistant integrated with OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot into vehicles.
In a research note to institutional investors, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said that Soundhound delivered "a robust quarter with AI momentum front and center."
Ives said SoundHound "noted strength across its partnership ecosystem" highlighted by Nvidia, "where the company will deliver in-vehicle voice-enabled generative AI responses that don’t require connectivity" with large language models running on the Nvidia Drive computer platform "as the company’s new products are leading to increased demand across multiple industries."
The analyst, who maintained his outperform rating and $9 price target, said SoundHound raised the low end of its full-year revenue guidance to $65 million to $77 million, with the midpoint slightly above Wall Street’s estimate of $69.5 million. However, it reaffirmed its 2025 revenue guidance of over $100 million.
"The company is well-positioned to capitalize on the demand for AI chatbots with a strong focus on partnerships and more use cases being provided while expanding its voice-enabled ecosystem to accelerate growth and margin," Ives said.
"Overall, we believe this was a major step in the right direction for the SOUN story," he said.
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